If you know me in any food context, you are well aware that I am a big dairy lover. Maybe it comes from childhood summers spent in France, after-work snacks of delicious, creamy, full-fat yogurt in Switzerland or maybe it comes from being a child vegetarian in search of dinner decadence. Who knows? All I can tell you is that dairy is the best in my book.

Some good dairy things are just hard to come by in the US, among them: plain, full-fat yogurt made with good milk and no additives, real, cultured butter and my personal favorite, crème fraîche. Maybe that’s a good thing! Since I can’t buy them, I make them and since I can’t make them everyday, they remain fatty, luscious, rate treats.

Having said that, crème fraîche is totally doable as a regular item if you have the metabolism to handle it, especially if you make your own kefir.

Traditionally, buttermilk is used as the culturing agent here, but the commercial buttermilks I’ve found don’t have a whole lot to do with the liquid gold you get in the butter-making process, and in my experience, they just don’t work. I’ve made crème fraîche with my own buttermilk and it’s fine, but I’ve had better luck making crème fraîche with kefir. For me, it cultures more quickly, the final product is thicker and I prefer the taste. But it’s easy to do it both ways. Try it and see what you like better.

Kefir sour cream tastes just like store bought sour cream except way, way better. Making it is easy as…kefir. Where you would normally pour milk over your kefir grains for you next batch, you will substitute cream. Then leave it as you would kefir. (My kefir cultures in about 12 hours in the summer and 24 hours in cooler weather). Once it is thick and creamy (not totally set), you are ready for the tricky part, removing your grains. Okay, it’s not that tricky, it just takes way longer than regular milk kefir. I hold my mesh strainer over a clean storage jar, spoon in some sour cream and then gently stir the mix with the rounded end of a chopstick, slowly pushing the sour cream into the jar and keeping the grains in the strainer. Once you’ve strained the sour cream into the jar, stick it in the fridge where it will completely set into sour cream texture. You are all done! You made delicious sour cream!!

When I make water kefir I like to try a different flavor every time. Mixing up your sugar source is a great way to impact the flavor of your water kefir.

Some sugar sources I like:

Molasses

Rapadura

Succanat

Cane sugar

Black Cherry (or other organic) fruit concentrate

It’s probably a good idea to think of the flavor your sugar source imparts when deciding what your finished product should be flavored with, but here are a few of my favorites:

Vanilla Bean

Sassafrass Root

Lemon/Lime

Shiso/Stone Fruit (plum works great!)

Basil

Strawberry Basil

Any seasonal fruit

Lemon Thyme/Lemon

Parsley Lemon

Lemon Mint

Ginger

Earl Grey Tea

Dried cherries

Basil and ginger make for a tasty drink

I use one of two ways to flavor my kefir. If I want to use a really acidic flavor, I wait until bottling (or even drinking) and just mix in my desired quantity. So for instance, I would toss a tablespoon of lime juice and a tablespoon of lemon juice into a finished and strained quart of water kefir. Adjust quantity to your taste. A little more and you’ve got healthy Sprite! You can use this method with any juice. (I do sometimes put a lemon slice or apple slice in during primary fermentation. Dom suggested a lemon slice and it makes for a delicious and refreshing finished product!)

If it’s something less acidic, dried fruit, herbs, vanilla beans or ginger for example, just toss them into your strained kefir and let another round of fermentation take place on the counter. A few days should do the trick. As always, I recommend tasting along the way to see where your preferred flavor strength lies.

If you want to use fresh fruit it’s a little bit more of a pain in the ass. You don’t want to let your fruit ferment for much longer than 24 hours, and that might not give you a strong enough flavor. I like it. It’s subtle. But if you want bold fruit flavor, strain out your fruit after a day or two, and then add new, fresh fruit in and repeat everyday until you get the flavor you want. See why it’s a bit easier to use dried fruit? If you do go this route, a good starting point, quantity-wise is one chopped peach, pear, apple or plum or a large handful of slightly mashed berries per quart of kefir.

3 melon kefir might be a pain in the ass, but it tastes like summer

If you’re doing something like parsley lemon, you’ll want to do a secondary fermentation with the parsley and then add the lemon juice once you’ve strained out the parsley. Yes, I like weird flavors! Parsley lemon is great in a gin and tonic! Note that all probiotic benefit is likely killed the second this touches booze. But that doesn’t mean the tasty flavor is destroyed!

Have fun and tell me which flavors you’ve added to your water kefir!

PS – Cultures for Health has a great video that lays this all out very clearly!